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Thursday morning’s (at least in the East) double-overtime victory by the Boston Bruins over the Pittsburgh Penguins gave us some of the most compelling hockey of this NHL post-season.

It was a sensational hockey game and it’s a shame that a last-gasp rally by the Penguins still leaves them on the brink of elimination Friday night.

The series is not over (cough) but this smells like another overwhelming playoff disappointment for a franchise whose potential promised so much more, but whose performance failed to deliver.

That the Penguins didn’t start the Eastern Conference final – on home ice, no less – with the kind of determination they showed in Game 3 is going to be a big regret for the club. It’s also a letdown to hockey fans everywhere who would have loved to see the kind of hockey they saw Wednesday for six or seven games.

It was like Game 3 compressed everything we could have seen in the first three games into a 96-minute performance that will help define the 2013 playoffs.

The Penguins fell behind again early in the game, but this time had the pushback they lacked in the first two games of the series.

Penguins centre Evgeni Malkin was the best player on the ice by the length of a Zdeno Chara hockey stick, swooping and dangling and looking dangerous in just about every one of his 34 shifts.

Bruins centre Patrice Bergeron, bloodied and looking so tired he couldn’t raise his arms to celebrate, added to his legend as a great big-game performer with another overtime winner.

Then there was Bruins centre Gregory Campbell, who played for about 50 seconds on a fibula broken by a Malkin slapshot during a Penguins power play. He got up and hobbled about, took a slash at a passing Penguin and assumed the position of a table hockey goaltender a couple of times as he tried to block another couple of shots.

When the puck finally exited the Bruins zone, he struggled to the bench, the Bruins faithful chanting, “Campbell! Campbell!”

It was a great moment and will become even greater – the stuff of Stanley Cup legend – if the Bruins go on to win their second Stanley Cup in three years.

It will be interesting to see what effect Campbell’s willingness to throw himself in front of Malkin’s shot and the resulting season-ending injury will have on the Bruins.

Certainly they will miss him on the most effective fourth line in the NHL and his penalty killing; it’s potentially a huge blow.

But there also remains the possibility his sacrifice and willingness to live up to the Stanley Cup playoff ideal will be something the Bruins can rally around.

“I wouldn’t say rally, but we talked about it. We don’t want that to go to waste,” said Bruins winger Shawn Thornton.

“It takes a big set to lay down in front of a slapper especially from that guy and obviously you saw him play on a broken leg for 45 seconds. You want to play well for him after that, for sure.”

Thornton was asked if some players would have just stayed down on the ice.

“Say about 95% of the guys?” he responded. “Definitely.”

“I think our team wants to do it for all the right reasons and that’s one of them,” said Bruins coach Claude Julien. “When you see a guy go down like that and the way he went down and what he did, what he’s done for the team and what he did (Thursday) night to block that shot, the guys are going to want to rally around that.

“It’s also got to be more than that, but he’s certainly part of that equation.”

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There wasn't much left of Daniel Briere's voice. The veteran Montreal Canadiens forward had been turned into a cheerleader, sitting on the Canadiens bench for most of the third period of their Game 7 victory over the Boston Bruins, cooling his heels despite having set up the crucial first goal two minutes into the game.